Dark Days
by potatochip53
Summary: Thor and Loki. Inseparable. Brothers forever. Until they weren't.


The room felt cold. Loki always used to love the cold. The snowflakes would twirl around outside of Asgard's burnished gold palace and Loki would sit and watch for hours. Nobody questioned it. After all, he was Loki. They were opposites, they were. Brothers nonetheless, but opposites all the same. Thor was the definition of warmth. Loving, loud demeanor and gleaming blonde hair. Loki, the opposite. Cold, biting sarcasm and void dark hair.

They balanced each other. Thor the light and Loki the dark. They would play together in childhood. Splashing round in creeks and exploring places they shouldn't. There was one occasion where Thor scraped his knee and Loki helped him limp back to a healer. Yes. They had their differences, but they were brothers.

Cerulean blue and moss green. Blonde and black. Green and gold. Hammer and dagger. Magic and strength. Fists and words. Opposites always attract. Brothers in life. Brothers in death. They promised themselves as kids. Always together. Never apart. Then things began to change.

Funny thing is, sometimes the things you promise yourself you'd never do as a kid, you end up doing later in life. The brothers began to grow apart. Not by much. A few more disagreements than usual. Some secrets here and there. A couple words that weren't meant to see the light of day. A crack spiderwebbed through their unbreakable bond. Barely visible, yet it was still there.

From then on it only got worse. That crack affected everything from friendships, to battle, to family. Their friends had to take sides, subtly diffusion tense conversations. Trust in battle wasn't the same. They couldn't rely on each other as much. They faltered more. Family had more fighting than ever before.

Fast forward years into the future. Loki was ruler of trickery and mischief whereas Thor resided in his cover of thunder and lightning.

Everything escalated from that single crack into an explosion of dancing destruction. Trust in battle was nonexistent and had consequently cost the lives of valiant warriors of Asgard. Friendships were divided and broken, unevenly it seemed. Yet there was no one to blame for this but themselves. Thor fought day in and day out, Mjolnir resting as an ever steady weight in his hand. Reassuring that Thor had at least one thing that would never leave. Loki resided in the library, the one place Thor was least likely to go. There, he learned more about magic and illusion. New ways to create mischief and trickery. Deceit.

They fight daily now and there's hardly a way to make them quit. It's yelling and kicking and violent. It's always the same. Why did you do this. Why are you like that. But sometimes, very rarely, a patron crossing by the closed door they are behind or one of their eavesdropping friends will creep slowly by and it will be quiet for once. Only the sounds of breathing penetrate the silence. And suddenly, one of their walls comes down and everything spills. Why did you leave. How did this get so far.

Everything seems far too warm now. Burning up with guilt and despair. Thor used to love the heat. He was always a furnace. And then he began to control lightning and he just got warmer. His skin was sunkissed from spending many days outside under the burning sphere of life. He would always glow with radiance, laughing and wildly running wherever the wind took him, dragging Loki along behind him.

Centuries have past and the ties that bind have finally broken. The once inseparable brothers now stand on opposite sides, as far away from each other as they could get. As destiny says it is fate. Fire and ice were never meant to mix. Loki is to lead an army to destroy Midgard, Thor to defend. They clash in a storm of anger and pain. Both wanting things to be normal again but neither knowing how.

It was the first of many major outbursts, the outlook not looking too good for the wayward brothers who lost their way. Again and again they confronted each other, in different ways, on different realms. Yet the ending was always the same. Physical pain and more fighting. Almost considered war if you will. And so it seemed they were doomed to an eternity of constant hatred and war pitted against each other. It grew worse each century they spent fighting. Then, Thor was to be crowned king.

Before the coronation could conclude, frost giants invaded Asgard looking for the casket of ancient winters. Two guards were killed and the Destroyer was activated for the first time. The whole thing smelled of deceit from the beginning. There was no way the frost giants could've have gotten into Asgard's stronghold, shielded from Heimdall's ever watchful gaze, without help. On the day of Thor's coronation no less. Alas, Loki was never confronted and time went on. Before, Loki always had a kind of hesitation when facing Thor in battle. That seemed to disappear as whatever emotion Loki still held for Thor seemed to vanish completely.

Thor was banished to Earth and so the story goes. Loki's attempt to murder him with the Destroyer fails and Thor regains his hammer and is once again worthy. The attack on Earth with the Chitauri, led by Loki, is stopped and yet Loki still somehow manages to escape. Thor stays on Earth and helps the Avengers rebuild what damage has become to their civilization. Once again, no pardons were granted and Thor and Loki still hated each other and refused to let bygones be bygones.

These pair of brother's were the most idiotic Gods ever in the history of Asgardian kind. Everything that happens around them. They still care about each other. It's so obvious. And yet they still fight and cause the other more blood and pain. It's like a cycle. Throughout all of the fighting, the war and bloodshed, not once was either of the brother's harmed. It should seem evident. Everything they'd been through together, and they still could not willfully cause each other harm. And maybe that was what cause the anger between them.

Thor was almost never angry, but when he was, he was like the sun. He burned far too hot to even be near. It was blistering fury that overcame Thor's mind and took away his control. It was near painful to watch. Loki was the exact opposite. He would become cold and calculated, slicing through his enemies with icy daggers as well as words. Oh, it didn't take his control away, instead it gave him far too much. They were a sight to behold. The sun and the moon clashing, throwing each other out of orbit.

Then, Ragnarok came. In Norse mythology, Ragnarok is known as the twilight of the God's. The apocalypse if you will. Many are fated to be killed and Asgard was doomed to fall to wreckage and ash. Ragnarok was considered to be a myth by many who heard it. The whispers on a street corner. Gossip running rampant throughout towns. As well as it was told, the full story was never revealed. The main part was that Asgard would fall and each and every Asgardian would be doomed to perish. Not a single person ever heard who specifically was fated to be killed.

Maybe they would have exercised more caution if the knowledge that Thor, bright and friendly Thor, was destined to be slain by Jormungand, the weasley serpent. Or that King Odin, ruler and champion of many wars, would be caught under the blade of Fenrir, the wolf.

Loki was said to have began Ragnarok by breaking free of his imprisonment. Whatever kind of prison wasn't specified. So when Loki freed himself from the jail cells under Asgard, the world began to shake and the sky cried tears of bleeding ash. Asgardians were dying left and right. The entire population was flooding into the direction of the Bifrost, the only escape from Asgard.

Odin and Frigga were the first to enter the Bifrost, turning back and watching the population, the entire world of Asgard, as each person came closer to the exit. King and Queen stood side by side, prepared to give their lives, lead their people onward, and leave Asgard last. It doesn't matter whether Asgard falls or not. It will be a definite blow, but Asgard is wherever her people are.

But to the horror of the two royal people, the strain of the population and the cracking structure of Asgard must have been too much and the bridge cracked and broke, sending millions of people tumbling to the water. Sending Asgard tumbling into the wine dark sea.

This was it. Asgard was lost.

Frigga and Odin had no choice to take to the Bifrost and leave their home. They went to a place they knew only by name. A place that was given high praise from one of their sons. A place that would have to do until they had the strength to see their crumbling world again. Midgard.

From there on, the story's edges become a bit blurred. Frigga and Odin retreated to Midgard. There they meet the Avengers and tell the tale of Thor and Loki. This very same tale being told now. Sif and the Warrior's Three are assumed to have fallen along with the rest of Asgard. Heimdall is said to have stayed at his post, accompanying the Bifrost til the end. Nobody knows what happened between Thor and Loki.

Then, later, when the King and Queen returned to their domain, Avengers in tow (they were hard to deter, especially when Thor had been endangered) they were in shock. The palace had crumbled like sand. Burnished gold and tarnished silver glimmered in the sun. A sick representation of the beauty in chaos.

Thor lay spread eagle across the grass, burnished gold hair and tarnished silver armor shining in golden rays of sunlight. His cape, a blood red blanket billowing out across the floor. Symbolic. It's only fitting that Asgard's best soldier would perish along with his home. The place he was always fighting for. Mjolnir was next to his hand, laying as if it had clattered onto the floor after his grip became lifeless. His eyes were closed. Cerulean blue eyes will never open again. They used to sparkle, like the sky right after a storm. Now they sit, dull and cold and catatonic. They don't sparkle now. They stay closed. They aren't the glistening sky after a storm anymore. They are the storm. Laying there lifeless. The color of a storm that will never come. It almost looks as if he is asleep. But no. His tan has faded, skin beginning to take on a deathly pallor. He will never laugh again .

Loki was a few feet away, legs straight with his right arm spread along the floor, and his left centered on his chest. Regal even in death. His dark hair contrasted his pale skin, the sheen of death hadn't shown through yet. Unlike Thor, he looked peaceful. Twas like he greeted death as an old friend. His green eyes, always razor sharp with wit, faded to a dull hue. A washed out town. They lay on their backs, as if stargazing for the last time, just like when they were children. "Look Loki, there's Dvalin, the dwarf deer. And oh, Thiassi's eyes!"

Contrary to what everybody says, it was not peaceful. Oh yes, the staunch quiet of death sure is. But not the scene. Definitely not the scene. The way Loki's eyes were fading into a milk infused green was not peaceful. Thor's extended arm, as if reaching for the sky, was not peaceful. The way their bodies lay in what could be mistaken for sleep was not peaceful. The disintegrated buildings and breezy winds were not peaceful. Nothing about it was peaceful. It was chaotic.

The room was cold. The room was burning. They lay on separate beds, brought to Avengers Tower. Maybe they'd be buried here. Maybe not. It was just an escape from the rubble of their broken home. Two halves of one whole. Then, they became just two halves. Life goes on.

But sometimes, sometimes one must ask oneself the hard questions. What? What happened here? What caused these two brothers of inseparable nature, to separate? When? When did this happen? During what time did they begin to push each other away? Why? Why did this happen? Why did this family need separating? Why couldn't everybody just be happy? Why did this have to happen to two innocent little boys?

They're dead. There's no way to bring then back. Their eyes will remain forever closed and their bodies will stiffen and rot in death. But whenever you go to bed and lose yourself in the sweet void of sleep, I beg of you. Ask yourself this. What is so evil, that it would tear the love of two brothers apart and separate them, even in death?

Two brothers, who used to be so close that their futures seemed to be distinctly intertwined. Now the connection lay severed, broken under years of shattered screams and broken anger. How could something be so heartless and cold, as to tear apart a family? Bodies lay limp on cold hard beds as the smell of a sterile laboratory wafts through the room. Is this what was meant to happen? Broken in body and spirit, lying dead, next to each other? Was there ever a way to stop this? I don't know. I'm not completely sure there was any other way.

But sometimes when I'm feeling particularly optimistic, I like to lay under the stars. Watching for Dvalin the dwarf deer or the telltale sparkle of Thiassi's eyes. And then I think that maybe, just maybe, there's a universe where everything turned out okay. Where Thor and Loki run together through fields as children, and fight battles back to back as adults. Where Loki's words still cut with their sharp wit and where Thor's laugh still echoes through the halls of Asgard. But then I remember, Asgard is dead. Loki's words have stopped altogether. And Thor's laugh faded a long time ago.


End file.
